East Chapel Hill’s Sydney Holman continues piling up goals, netting 13 of them against Cary Green Hope in an 18-12 win on Tuesday that secured an Eastern Regional Championship for the Wildcats and earned them a spot in Saturday’s 4-A girls’ lacrosse championship at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary.

Holman scored 10 goals in ECH’s previous game that got them to the semifinals, where the Wildcats wore down the Falcons, Green Hope coach Joe Nassif said.

“They were the aggressors. We couldn’t get possession,” Nassif said. “They got the momentum, and they kept it…We were just not able to win the draws. We were not able to get ground balls, and all the credit to them, absolutely. It looked like they were the fitter team in the second half.”

The first half left a lot to be desired of the Wildcats, ECH coach Michelle Michaels said. At halftime, one of ECH’s assistant coaches lit a verbal fire and put it on the Wildcats, Michaels said.

“Honestly, it was motivation, because they didn’t seem to have it in the first half,” Michaels said about her team. “The second half was how we usually play.”

Michaels said she believes the Wildcats have one more win left in them, adding that she’s not going to change anything for this weekend's grand finale, anticipating a possible rematch with Charlotte Catholic.

“We met them earlier in the season, and I think that we had a pretty rough game,” Michaels said. “We’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ve been working hard in practice, and these girls believe in each other and I believe in them.”

CHAPEL HILL—The Apex Cougars put a lock on the net and then left their paw prints all over the Eastern Regional Championship trophy for 4-A boys’ lacrosse after caging East Chapel Hill 11-7 on Tuesday.

The Wildcats kept scrapping and netted four goals in the fourth quarter, but the hole they’d dug for themselves was too deep.

“I wouldn’t say they took it to us,” ECH coach Austin Bridges said. “I would say what they were trying to do and what we were trying to do was very similar. I just think they did a better job. Our motto for the playoffs has been discipline and urgency. We had great discipline, and we had terrible urgency.”

The Wildcats felt okay about things at halftime but in the second half just didn’t get it done on the defensive end, Bridges said.

It was a 2-2 game after the first quarter before the Cougars got their offense going and began to separate from the Wildcats.

“We kind of, sort of fixed it, and sort of possessed the ball a little better,” Apex coach John Hayden said. “Once we started getting some ground balls and a few face-offs, we started wearing them down.”